Clinton on 2016: 'The flagrantly sexist candidate won'
Hillary Clinton calls candidate Donald Trump “flagrantly sexist” in her soon-to-be-released book reflecting on the 2016 presidential election.
“This has to be said,” Clinton writes, according to the New York Times, which obtained an advance copy of the book and published a report on it Thursday night. “Sexism and misogyny played a role in the 2016 presidential election. Exhibit A is that the flagrantly sexist candidate won.”
During the campaign, Clinton said Trump had a “penchant for sexism.” The celebrity real estate mogul’s comments about women sparked a number of firestorms, such as when Trump called Clinton a “nasty woman” during the final presidential debate.
Clinton’s memoir “What Happened” officially comes out Tuesday, but a number of excerpts have already made waves. The Trump criticism calls to mind another passage in which Clinton muses about telling her opponent, “Back up, you creep!” as he loomed behind her during the second presidential debate.
In an audiobook excerpt aired on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” Thursday, Clinton also expounds upon her relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom she faced off with as secretary of state.
“Our relationship has been sour for a long time,” Clinton writes. “Putin doesn’t respect women and despises anyone who stands up to him, so I’m a double problem. After I criticized one of his policies, he told the press, ‘It’s better not to argue with women,’ but went out to call me weak. ‘Maybe weakness is not the worst quality for a woman,’ he joked. Hilarious.”
In addition to Trump and Putin, Clinton’s tome takes on less obvious targets, like former Vice President Joe Biden and her primary opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who she said inflicted “lasting damage” to her campaign.
During an appearance on CBS’s “Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” Sanders dismissed that criticism.
“Look, Secretary Clinton ran against the most unpopular candidate in the history of this country, and she lost and she was upset about it and I understand that,” Sanders said. “But our job is really not to go backwards. It is to go forwards.”
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